The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.
Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion
Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.
But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes
On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—
He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him
More than to the visionary his cell:
His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.
No, not even the jaguar stirred.
As I scanned my eyes across the barren cell holding the two resigned beasts, Ted Hughes' poem came to mind. "It looks like a dungeon in here," whispered Xiao Chiann ,warily eyeing the rusted padlocks holding the snoring jaguars prisoners. She wondered what they were like, these sleek beasts, outside of captivity, out in the wilderness where they belong.
I wondered what they had done to deserve this imprisonment.
Like a bored house cat on a lazy Sunday afternoon, these lifeless eyes rested momentarily on the hushed audience gathered outside his desolate cage and flickered away to watch the carcass of a chicken lying on his stained cage floor, where two rats had snuck into and were feasting away under his indifferent gaze.
In one of the neighboring cells lay the King of the Jungle, a once-proud soul now entrapped in a pitiful shell of skin, bones, and a sore scab in the place where His Majesty's crown used to be. The bars were the only barrier between gawking humans and the most revered beast of the wild, forgotten by Nature, snoring next to the bloody remains of what used to be a rabbit.
At the other end of the zoo lay a reindeer, himself forgotten by the jolly bearded man in his red outfit. His coat was patchy and wounded, and he sported antlers that impressed all who beheld it. All, but the reindeer himself.
The plight of the caged polar bears, pride and joy of the Leningrad Zoo, left a weeping wound in the hearts in all who laid eyes on them. This bear paced rhythmically inside his little cage, now swaying his head from side to side, oblivious to the sympathetic audience his mournful look attracted, now laying his head against the bars that held him, trying to look as far out as the solid metals would allow. Even with paws strong enough to knock even the stoutest man out cold, and teeth sharp enough to sink into the thickest skin, this creature attracted more looks of sympathy than of fear.
Opposite the caged polar bears lived 2 more fortunate bears, enjoying a bigger enclosure where they sauntered around and lazed about in the sun.
Yes, these Polar Bears here had it much better. They even had their own, personal cesspools where they could swim the afternoon away.Only no one was sure this bear enjoyed it very much.
.... or whether he appreciated the in-house refreshments that came with the privileges of a pool.
The aviary, on the other hand, was bursting was colorful, squawking life.
It was time for some of them to find wives for themselves.
....While the less attractive ones humbly tried to keep their heads low.
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